


Tingling Ears

by lirin



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna trusts her husband to always be honest with her, but she's also picked up on the "not always truthful" half of the equation...and she's a tad grumpy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tingling Ears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



There’s something to be said for the comforts of home. A glass of sherry, a cozy seat on the settee—Jarvis opened the door with these thoughts at the forefront of his mind.

“Darling!” Anna hurried in from the kitchen. She was wearing a casual but elegant dress and looked as beautiful as always. “Edwin, dear. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting up, wondering what could have happened to you.”

Jarvis sighed and rubbed his ear. “Mr. Stark just had a few minor errands he needed me to do. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I would be late. I should have called.” He sat down on the settee with another sigh.

“What could he have for you to do at this time of night? Was it something dangerous?”

“Oh, no, no. Of course not,” he replied, rubbing at his ear again. He wished he could tell her what had really happened, but he had promised both Miss Carter and Mr. Stark that he wouldn’t tell anybody, and besides he really didn’t want Anna to worry. Well, worry more than she had been already.

Anna cocked her head to the side and regarded him thoughtfully. “You're sure rubbing your ear a lot,” she remarked. “It must be bothering you a great deal. I’ll get you something to help with that.”

“Oh, no need!” Jarvis called after her as she rushed off. “Really, Anna, it’s quite all right!”

Anna was already slamming cupboards in the kitchen, and he wasn’t sure she had even heard him. He supposed he might as well let her do whatever she had in mind if it would make her happy, since she seemed a bit irritated that he’d been out so late. And really, he ought to have phoned and let her know not to wait up.

“Here we are, Edwin,” Anna said, returning to the room with an assortment of bottles and cloths and whatnot. She laid a cloth on the side table and started pouring things on it. "Beeswax for dry skin...castor oil for muscles...tea tree oil” (This last was particularly pungent; quite malodorous, in fact.) “for general utility.” She handed him the completed poultice. “Here, hold this on your ear. It will help.”

Jarvis gazed with aversion at the dripping cloth. “Anna, are you sure? My ear isn’t particularly bothering me; surely such a noisome remedy is a tad excessive.”

“If your ear isn’t bothering you, then why do you keep rubbing at it?” Anna inquired with a raised eyebrow.

Jarvis was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question now that Miss Carter had pointed it out, but he hoped Anna didn’t. If he himself hadn’t realized that he rubbed his ear when he was being less than truthful, then surely his wife could not have noticed either?

“Cloth. Ear. Now,” said Anna. “And I think it’s not too late for sherry, either.” She pulled the bottle and glasses from the collection she had brought in from the kitchen, while her husband reluctantly held the cloth to his ear and tried not to breathe too deeply. “So what _did_ you do today?” she asked, handing him one of the glasses and settling back with the other.

“Oh, this and that,” he replied. “Nothing important.” His hand twitched, but since it was already right by his ear and full of smelly poultice, he hoped the movement would go unnoticed. “Mr. Stark wanted me to pick some things up for him and take them somewhere else, and it just took more time than I expected. And what about you, Anna? What did you do today?”

She smiled and took a sip of sherry. “I cut fabric and sewed fabric, same as every day. And when I got home I was trying to bake a pie to use up that extra pumpkin you left in the icebox, but I couldn’t find the nutmeg. There was a bottle in the pantry that said ‘nutmeg’ on it, but the contents didn’t look like any self-respecting nutmeg that I’ve ever come across. And I just happened across the cinnamon, luckily, because its bottle wasn’t labelled at all.”

“That’s...distressing,” said Jarvis. He patted her on the shoulder with one hand, and hoped this would distract her enough that she wouldn’t notice that he was using the other hand to set the poultice down as far away as possible.

“I agree,” said Anna. “And we need to do something about it. Since you’re not doing anything important for Mr. Stark, not to mention he isn’t even in town at the moment, surely you can take some time off to reorganize the pantry and especially the spices. I want to be sure that if I pick up a bottle that says ‘allspice’ on it, that it actually contains allspice. And I think the garlic has gone bad.”

Jarvis thought for a moment. He found himself running up against the boundary between honesty and truthfulness that he had drawn for himself. Miss Carter’s machinations were keeping him quite busy currently, but he didn’t particularly want to tell Anna that. “Mr. Stark does have more duties for me over the next couple days, but how about weekend after next? I’ll take a day and we’ll do nothing but overhaul the kitchen spices.”

She smiled, broader this time. “It’s a date.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The text in the image is taken from I Samuel 3:11, and in English (KJV) reads "both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle." At first I was planning to reference that bit in II Timothy about "itching ears", but I figured Anna was more likely to have the Old Testament verse in mind.
> 
> Thanks again to my sister for her help with GIMP, this time for introducing me to the "Drop Shadow" tool, which I think is absolutely marvelous and I wish I'd known about it sooner because I want to use it on everything now. :-)
> 
> And lastly, Chag Purim Sameach to my recipient VictoriaWrites! I hope you enjoyed reading these stories half as much as I enjoyed writing them.


End file.
